Top 20 U.S. lawyers react on being pipped by AI

Oct 29, 2018, 2:02 AM EDT

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Earlier this year, the top 20 U.S. corporate lawyers locked horn with an artificial intelligence program in a four-hour contest that required the participants to review five Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) and spot any loopholes or aberrations in the contracts.

It turned out that the lawyers, with years of experience at leading firms and with all their legal and contract expertise, were outperformed by LawGeex AI, which took just 26 seconds to spot any issues at an accuracy rate of 94 percent compared to human peers, who finished with 85 percent accuracy rate, notes Hackernoon.

The lawyers, humbled by their losses to a set of algorithms, admit that AI is disrupting many industries and the field of law isn’t an exception, as the technology presents a tool to sift through verbose legal language and can shoulder the mundane, monotonous job of reviewing fundamentally similar documents.

Roping in AI for contract review doesn’t undermine humans, but in fact, it can help free up lawyers from a routine, grueling task to focus on more complex subjects that still require a human brain, reports Mashable.